Imagined hammerblows of fate felled the hero of Mahler's Sixth. He finished the composition in 1904. That same year an all too real hammerblow struck Suk: his revered teacher and wife's father, Dvorak, died. Suk decided to write a large symphony in Dvorak's memory, and 14 months later, after he had completed three of its five movements, the Angel of Death (called Asrael in Muslim mythology) visited once more and carried off Otylka, his beloved wife. ''Such a bitter blow either destroys one or bears one up on all the strength which has been lying dormant... I was saved by music.'' Bereavement transformed Suk from the composer of the beautiful but highly derivative Serenade for strings into a creator of power and originality.
This 'strength' is appropriately titanic at the start of the finale. After the Adagio's mainly idyllic, gentle (and perhaps overlong) portrait of Otylka, the stark reality of death, thundered out on four timpani, ignites upheavals of mingled despair and defiance, the second of which has an intensity that Mahler would have envied (Pesek's Liverpool trumpets are quite magnificent here). This outburst, in turn, launches a 'do-or-die' allegro of grim determination. If these emotive descriptions invite comparison with Mahler, and the Scherzo's dance of death certainly does, then I should point out that Suk's moments of consolation in Nature and blissful reminiscence have a haunted dream-like quality that is exclusively Czech in feeling. And the cyclic principle of construction, the harmony, and techniques of intensification owe much to Liszt. To my mind, there are more echoes of A Faust Symphony here than any Mahler. But Suk's symphonic world is personal, the influence of Dvorak, so obvious in the Serenade, is now completely absorbed. Asrael is a work of such compelling emotional unity and structural mastery that, in RL's words, it ''transcends the particular grief that inspired it''. Indeed, he described it as ''arguably the finest Czech symphony after Dvorak''.
How marvellous that, after decades of virtual neglect outside Suk's homeland, it should be championed by Pesek in Liverpool (and at last month's Prom) and by Rattle in Birmingham. Neumann's version (recorded in 1983 and previously available on a Denon disc) is superbly played, but there's an extra imaginative dimension in Pesek's shading and shaping of the work that often recalls the invaluable 1952 Talich (Supraphon, 6/54—nla). There are moments where Talich is still in a class of his own: the Trio's dream world of sweet relief amidst the Scherzo's grotesque contortions is initially evoked by Talich in fragile, almost impressionist tones of exquisite tenderness—Pesek runs him close here, but there is too much daylight in Neumann's account. The only point at which the latter is preferable is the extraordinary close to the first movement. An attempt to achieve an apotheosis in the major is violently crushed by a plunge back to the minor and a funeral march, based on the Fate theme. The visceral impact of Neumann's bass drum has to be heard to be believed, and he sustains the tempo after the march breaks off for one final crunch of terrifying power.
The Supraphon engineering for Neumann is good, but the strings sound a little hard in fortes, and the woodwind balance is very close. This may help to elucidate features like the finale's resolution of Death's last appearance—tritones on clarinet (Neumann, 12'27'') to perfect fourths on flute—though it would appear to be Neumann's idea to highlight the significance of this moment. The Virgin Classics disc has a wider range of dynamics, a more natural balance, and Pesek's tempos are uniformly better chosen to convey the full emotional range of this astonishing symphony.'